June 2007 - Categories - categories.org.au

Foundations?
by F W Lawvere 03 Sep '10

03 Sep '10

Down with "Foundations"! Up with algebra! Dear Friends, Presumably I am among those who are being "vilified" as "lovers of categories as foundation". By avoiding any precise definition, such a formulation might appeal to the widespread justified boredom induced by the past hundred years of "foundations as justification". Whenever I used the word "foundation" in my writings over the past forty years, I have explicitly rejected that reactionary use of the term and instead used the definition implicit in the work of my teachers Truesdell and Eilenberg. Namely, an important component of mathematical practice is the careful study of historical and contemporary analysis, geometry, etc. to extract the essential recurring concepts and constructions; making those concepts and constructions (such as homomorphism, functional, adjoint functor, etc.) explicit provides powerful guidance for further unified development of all mathematical subjects, old and new. What is the primary tool for such summing up of the essence of ongoing mathematics? Algebra! Nodal points in the progress of this kind of research occur when, as is the case with the finite number of axioms for the metacategory of categories, all that we know so far can be expressed in a single sort of algebra. I am proud to have participated with Eilenberg, Mac Lane, Freyd, and many others, in bringing about the contemporary awareness of Algebra as Category Theory Had it not been for the century of excessive attention given to the alleged possibility that mathematics is inconsistent, with the accompanying degradation of the F-word, we would still be using it in the sense known to the general public: the search for what is "basic". We, who supposedly know the explicit algebra of homomorphisms, functionals, etc. are long remiss in our duty to find ways to utilize those concepts also in guiding high school calculus. Best wishes, Bill Bibliography: - The Category of Categories as a Foundation for Mathematics, La Jolla conference 1965, Springer (1966) - Adjointness in Foundations, Dialectica, (1969), to be reprinted in TAC - Foundations and Applications: Axiomatization and Education, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, (2003) vol 9, pp 213-224 - Sets for Mathematics, w/ Bob Rosebrugh, Cambridge Univ. Press, (2003) ************************************************************ F. William Lawvere Mathematics Department, State University of New York 244 Mathematics Building, Buffalo, N.Y. 14260-2900 USA Tel. 716-645-6284 HOMEPAGE: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~wlawvere ************************************************************

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John Robinson, Sculptor
by Ronnie Brown 29 Jun '07

29 Jun '07

An appreciation of John's work is published in www.isama.org/hyperseeing June 2007. I have also published an I hope provocative article on `Promoting Mathematics' in MSOR Connections Vol 7, No 2, May 2007 downloadable from http://mathstore.ac.uk/newsletter/may2007/pdf/24_brown_r_promotingmaths.pdf It has some Grothendieck quotations and a theme is promoting mathematics to students! MSOR would I think welcome further debate and argument. Ronnie Brown

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COALGEBRAIC LOGIC in Oxford, August 10-11
by ak155＠mcs.le.ac.uk 28 Jun '07

28 Jun '07

================================================= Announcement of a workshop on COALGEBRAIC LOGIC August 10-11 Oxford University Invited speakers: * Marcelo Fiore (Cambridge, UK) * Rob Goldblatt (Wellington, New Zealand) * H.Peter Gumm (Marburg, Germany) * Bart Jacobs (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) * Lawrence Moss (Bloomington, US) * Yde Venema (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) More details, including modes of participation, can be obtained from: * http://se10.comlab.ox.ac.uk:8080/FOCS/COQL_en.html or by contacting the workshop organiser: * Alexander Kurz <kurz(a)mcs.le.ac.uk> This workshop will be partly adjacent to and partly interleaved with one on CATEGORICAL QUANTUM LOGIC which takes place August 11-12 and is organised by Bob Coecke, and both of these follow on from the conference ALGEBRAIC AND TOPOLOGICAL METHODS IN NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS III: * http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/notices/events/special/tancl07/ which takes place August 5-9 and is organised by Hilary Priestley and Mai Gehrke.

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Categorical Quantum Logic in Oxford, August 11-12
by Bob Coecke 27 Jun '07

27 Jun '07

Announcement of a workshop on CATEGORICAL QUANTUM LOGIC August 11-12 Oxford University Invited speakers: * Rick Blute (Ottawa, Canada) * Marcelo Fiore (Cambridge, UK) * John Harding (New Mexico, US) * Chris Isham (Imperial College, UK) * Dusko Pavlovic (Kestrel Institute, US) More details, including other speakers, participants, and modes of participation, can be obtained from: * http://se10.comlab.ox.ac.uk:8080/FOCS/COQL_en.html or by contacting the workshop organiser: * Bob Coecke <Bob.Coecke(a)comlab.ox.ac.uk> This workshop will be partly adjacent to and partly interleaved with one on COALGEBRAIC LOGIC which takes place August 10-11 and is organised by Alexander Kurz, and both of these are preceded by the conference ALGEBRAIC AND TOPOLOGICAL METHODS IN NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS: * http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/notices/events/special/tancl07/ which takes place August 5-9 and is organised by Hilary Priestley and Mai Gehrke, and at which: * Samson Abramsky (Oxford, UK) will be giving an invited address on his work in the area of categorical quantum logic.

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[TYPES/announce] Categorical Quantum Logic in Oxford, August 11-12
by Bob Coecke 27 Jun '07

27 Jun '07

[ The Types Forum (announcements only), http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-announce ] Announcement of a workshop on CATEGORICAL QUANTUM LOGIC August 11-12 Oxford University Invited speakers: * Rick Blute (Ottawa, Canada) * Marcelo Fiore (Cambridge, UK) * John Harding (New Mexico, US) * Chris Isham (Imperial College, UK) * Dusko Pavlovic (Kestrel Institute, US) More details, including other speakers, participants, and modes of participation, can be obtained from: * http://se10.comlab.ox.ac.uk:8080/FOCS/COQL_en.html or by contacting the workshop organiser: * Bob Coecke <Bob.Coecke(a)comlab.ox.ac.uk> This workshop will be partly adjacent to and partly interleaved with one on COALGEBRAIC LOGIC which takes place August 10-11 and is organised by Alexander Kurz, and both of these are preceded by the conference ALGEBRAIC AND TOPOLOGICAL METHODS IN NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS: * http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/notices/events/special/tancl07/ which takes place August 5-9 and is organised by Hilary Priestley and Mai Gehrke, and at which: * Samson Abramsky (Oxford, UK) will be giving an invited address on his work in the area of categorical quantum logic.

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First Call for Papers --- ICALP 2008
by Icalp08 27 Jun '07

27 Jun '07

___________________________________________________________________ CALL FOR PAPERS - ICALP'08 35th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming July 6-13, 2008, Reykjavik, Iceland http://www.ru.is/icalp08 ___________________________________________________________________ The 35th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, the main conference and annual meeting of the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS), will take place from the 6th to the 13th of July 2008 in Reykjavik, Iceland. Following the successful experience of the last three editions, ICALP 2008 will complement the established structure of the scientific program based on Track A on Algorithms, Automata, Complexity and Games, and Track B on Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming, corresponding to the two main streams of the journal Theoretical Computer Science, with a special Track C on Security and Cryptography Foundations. The aim of Track C is to allow a deeper coverage of a particular topic, to be specifically selected for each year's edition of ICALP on the basis of its timeliness and relevance for the theoretical computer science community. In addition to the main conference, ICALP 2008 will also feature pre- and post-conference workshops on July 6, 12, and 13, 2008. A call for workshop is now open, and details on the submission of workshop proposals may be found at http://www.ru.is/icalp08/cfw.html. Papers presenting original research on all aspects of theoretical computer science are sought. Typical but not exclusive topics of interest are: Track A - Algorithms, Automata, Complexity and Games: * Algorithmic Aspects of Networks * Algorithmic Game Theory * Approximation Algorithms * Automata Theory * Combinatorics in Computer Science * Computational Biology * Computational Complexity * Computational Geometry * Data Structures * Design and Analysis of Algorithms * Internet Algorithmics * Machine Learning * Parallel, Distributed and External Memory Computing * Randomness in Computation * Quantum Computing Track B - Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming: * Algebraic and Categorical Models * Automata and Formal Languages * Emerging and Non-standard Models of Computation * Databases, Semi-Structured Data and Finite Model Theory * Principles of Programming Languages * Logics, Formal Methods and Model Checking * Models of Concurrent, Distributed, and Mobile Systems * Models of Reactive, Hybrid and Stochastic Systems * Program Analysis and Transformation * Specification, Refinement and Verification * Type Systems and Theory, Typed Calculi Track C - Security and Cryptography Foundations: * Cryptographic Notions, Mechanisms, Systems and Protocols * Cryptographic Proof Techniques, Lower bounds, Impossibilities * Foundations of Secure Systems and Architectures * Logic and Semantics of Security Protocols * Number Theory and Algebraic Algorithms (Primarily in Cryptography) * Pseudorandomness, Randomness, and Complexity Issues * Secure Data Structures, Storage, Databases and Content * Security Modeling: Combinatorics, Graphs, Games, Economics * Specifications, Verifications and Secure Programming * Theory of Privacy and Anonymity * Theory of Security in Networks and Distributed Computing * Quantum Cryptography and Information Theory SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract of no more than 12 pages in LNCS style presenting original research on the theory of Computer Science. Submissions should indicate to which track (A, B, or C) the paper is submitted. No simultaneous submission to other publication outlets (either a conference or a journal) is allowed. The proceedings will be published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series by Springer-Verlag. It is recommended that submissions adhere to the specified format and length. Submissions that are clearly too long may be rejected immediately. Additional material intended for the referee but not for publication in the final version - for example details of proofs - may be placed in a clearly marked appendix that is not included in the page limit. INVITED SPEAKERS (Preliminary list) * Ran Canetti (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and MIT, USA) * Bruno Courcelle (Labri, Universite Bordeaux, France) * Javier Esparza (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany) * Muthu Muthukrishnan (Google, USA) * Peter Winkler (Dartmouth, USA) IMPORTANT DATES (Provisional) * Workshop proposals due: October 31, 2007 * Submission: 23:59 GMT February 10, 2008. * Notification: April 9, 2008 * Final version due: April 30, 2008 PROGRAM COMMITTEE Track A * Michael Bender (State Univ of New York at Stony Brook, USA) * Magnus Bordewich (Durham University, UK) * Peter Bro Miltersen (University of Aarhus, Denmark) * Lenore Cowen (Tufts University, USA) * Pierluigi Crescenzi (Universita' di Firenze, Italy) * Artur Czumaj (University of Warwick, UK) * Edith Elkind (University of Southampton, UK) * David Eppstein (University of California at Irvine, USA) * Leslie Ann Goldberg (University of Liverpool, UK) (chair) * Martin Grohe (Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin, Germany) * Giuseppe Italiano (Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata", Italy) * Christos Kaklamanis (University of Patras, Greece) * Michael Mitzenmacher (Harvard University, USA) * Ian Munro (University of Waterloo, Canada) * Ryan O'Donnell (Carnegie Mellon University, USA) * Dana Ron (Tel-Aviv University, Israel) * Tim Roughgarden (Stanford University, US) * Christian Scheideler (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany) * Christian Sohler (University of Paderborn, Germany) * Luca Trevisan (University of California at Berkeley, USA) * Berthold Vocking (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) * Gerhard Woeginger (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands) Track B * Parosh Abdulla (Uppsala University, Sweden) * Luca de Alfaro (University of California, Santa Cruz, USA * Christel Baier (Technische Universitaet Dresden, Germany) * Giuseppe Castagna (Universite Paris 7, France) * Rocco de Nicola (Universita' di Firenze, Italy) * Javier Esparza (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany) * Marcelo Fiore (University of Cambridge, UK) * Erich Graedel (RWTH Aachen, Germany) * Jason Hickey (California Institute of Technology, USA) * Martin Hofmann (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitdt M|nchen, Germany) * Hendrik Jan Hoogeboom (Leiden University, NL) * Radha Jagadeesen (DePaul University, USA) * Madhavan Mukund (Chennai Mathematical Institute, India) * Luke Ong (Oxford University, UK) * Dave Schmidt (Kansas State University, USA) * Philippe Schnoebelen (ENS Cachan, France) * Igor Walukiewicz (Labri, Universite Bordeaux, France) (chair) * Mihalis Yannakakis (Columbia University, USA) * Wieslaw Zielonka (Universite Paris 7, France) Track C * Christian Cachin (IBM Research Zurich, CH) * Jan Camenisch (IBM Research Zurich, CH) * Ivan Damgaard (University of Aarhus, Denmark) (chair) * Stefan Dziembowski ((Universita' di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy) * Dennis Hofheinz (CWI Amsterdam, the Netherlands) * Susan Hohenberger (Johns Hopkins University, USA) * Yuval Ishai (Technion Haifa, Israel) * Lars Knudsen (DTU Copenhagen, Denmark) * Arjen Lenstra (EPFL Lausanne, CH) * Anna Lysyanskaya (Brown University, USA) * Rafael Pass (Cornell University, USA) * David Pointcheval (ENS Paris, France) * Dominique Unruh (Saarland University, Germany) * Serge Vaudenay (EPFL Lausanne, CH) * Bogdan Warinschi (Bristol University, UK) * Douglas Wikstroem * Stefan Wolf (ETH Zurich, CH) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: ********************* Luca Aceto Magnus M. Halldorsson Anna Ingolfsdottir CONTACT ADDRESSES: ****************** Luca Aceto, Magnus M. Halldorsson and Anna Ingolfsdottir Department of Computer Science Reykjavik University Kringlan 1, 103 Reykjavik, Iceland E-mail: icalp08(a)ru.is For further information see: http://www.ru.is/icalp08/ Vinsamlega athugið að upplýsingar í tölvupósti þessum og viðhengi eru eingöngu ætlaðar þeim sem póstinum er beint til og gætu innihaldið upplýsingar sem eru trúnaðarmál. Sjá nánar: http://www.ru.is/trunadur Please note that this e-mail and attachments are intended for the named addresses only and may contain information that is confidential and privileged. Further information: http://www.ru.is/trunadur

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CT2007 slides
by Robert Seely 26 Jun '07

26 Jun '07

I have put my slides for my CT2007 talk on my website www.math.mcgill.ca/rags/ partly for the benefit of those who asked me to, but mainly as an encouragement to the other speakers, whose slides would be very welcome to many of us who attended the meeting, and perhaps even more welcome to those who didn't. (Perhaps the organisers could set up a page of slides, as was done for CT2006.) Re the content of my own slides: I have added three slides from my FMCS 2007 talk which show how the comonad S (or !) arises naturally from the additive structure; together with a result we (B.C.S.) proved during the CT2007 meeting, this goes a long way to answering (in the affirmative) a question of Anders Kock as to whether the differential structure in a differential category is "property" rather than "structure". If you are interested in this material you should look at our MSCS paper "Differential Categories" (linked on my webpage, where you will find my slides from my 2006 talks as well, which fill in more of the story). -= rags =- -- <rags(a)math.mcgill.ca> <www.math.mcgill.ca/rags>

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papers
by Eduardo Dubuc 25 Jun '07

25 Jun '07

I call to your atention the following yet unpublished papers: 1. arXiv:0706.1771 [ps, pdf, other] Title: The fundamental progroupoid of a general topos Authors: Eduardo J. Dubuc Comments: 19 pages Subjects: Category Theory (math.CT); Algebraic Topology (math.AT) Here we introduce a new notion of covering projections in a topos E. They are a particular kind of locally constant objects. When the topos is locally connected, all locally constant objects are covering projections. Given a fix cover U = {U_i}, we show how to construct the set of connected components in the topos E_U of covering projections trivialized by U, even if the topos E is not locally connected. Our theory generalize to an arbritrary topos the whole theory of the fundamental progroupoid known for locally connected topos. The following two papers are in the area of categorical topology, or topological categories. arXiv:math/0612727 [ps, pdf, other] Title: Quasitopoi over a base category Authors: Eduardo J. Dubuc, Luis EspaÃ±ol Comments: 23 pages Subjects: Category Theory (math.CT) 3. arXiv:math/0611701 [ps, pdf, other] Title: Topological functors as familiarly-fibrations Authors: Eduardo J. Dubuc, Luis EspaÃ±ol Comments: 16 pages Subjects: Category Theory (math.CT)

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CALCO'07 - call for participation
by Michal Walicki 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

CALCO 2007 2nd Conference on Algebra and Coalgebra in Computer Science CALCO Tools Day August 20-24, 2007, Bergen, Norway July 1 Rgular registration deadline Hotel booking deadline After this date late registration prices take effect, and it may become very difficult to find hotel rooms. ------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.ii.uib.no/calco07/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ August 20 CALCO-jnr, CALCO-tools August 21-24 CALCO technical programme CALCO'07 takes place at Grand Hotel Terminus in Bergen, one of many historic hotels in Norway. The conference starts Monday with two workshops followed by an official reception Monday evening. The main program runs Tuesday through Friday, each morning starting with an invited speaker. Additional events are excursion by boat in the Bergen archipelago (Wednesday afternoon) and conference dinner on one of the mountains surrounding the city centre (Thursday afternoon). Registration ------------ Registration fee is 3200 NOK (1200 NOK for students), with a noticeable increase for late registration after July 1. The fee includes the full conference with all workshops, a copy of the proceedings, lunches and coffee breaks, and the official reception Monday evening. Registration is via the calco07 web site: http://www.ii.uib.no/calco07/ Note that Bergen is very busy during the tourist season, so early booking of accommodation and transportation is strongly recommended. Main CALCO'07 conference ------------------------ CALCO is a high-level, bi-annual conference. It brings together researchers and practitioners to exchange new results related to foundational aspects and both traditional and emerging uses of algebras and coalgebras in computer science. The study of algebra and coalgebra relates to the data, process and structural aspects of software systems. The accepted papers report results of theoretical work on the mathematics of algebras and coalgebras, the way these results can support methods and techniques for software development, as well as experience with the transition of resulting technologies into industrial practise. Some main key words are: * Abstract models and logics * Specialised models and calculi * Algebraic and coalgebraic semantics * System specification and verification The list of accepted papers is available at the web site. CALCO is Tuesday-Friday, 0900-1700, but ends at 1400 Friday. Invited speakers ---------------- Stephen L. Bloom, Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ, USA Luis Caires, New University of Lisbon, Portugal Barbara König, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany Glynn Winskel, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom CALCO-jnr (CALCO Young Researchers Workshop) -------------------------------------------- CALCO-jnr is dedicated to presentations by PhD students and by those who completed their doctoral studies within the past few years. This year 12 contributions within the theme of CALCO have been accepted. See the overview on the CALCO-jnr web page on the CALCO web site. CALCO-jnr is Monday 0900-1730. CALCO-tools ----------- CALCO-tools is dedicated to presentation and demonstration of tools based on algebraic and coalgebraic principles. These include systems/prototypes/tools developed specifically for design, checking, execution, and verification of (co)algebraic specifications, but also tools targeting different application domains but making core or interesting use of (co)algebraic techniques. A Maude tool environment and a coinductive prover will be showcased this year. CALCO-tools is Monday 1530-1700. -- http://www.ii.uib.no/calco07/

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PhD on refactoring at Oxford
by Oege.de.Moor＠comlab.ox.ac.uk 17 Jun '07

17 Jun '07

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD COMPUTING LABORATORY Programming Tools Group Oxford University Computing Laboratory has a fully funded three year research studentship working in the Programming Tools Group with the abc team: http://progtools.comlab.ox.ac.uk http://aspectbench.org PROJECT SUMMARY Software systems are rarely written from scratch: they evolve over long periods of time. When a change is made, this often affects many different locations in a system, and it is hard to make a change consistently. For that reason, automated tools to help the process of software change are desirable. "Refactoring" refers to the process of restructuring an existing piece of software, often prior to introducing new functionality, or to take advantage of a new technology. Refactoring must preserve the behaviour of existing code, and tools that help in refactoring both assist in the restructuring process and in checking that the behaviour has not changed. Unfortunately today's refactoring tools are very hard to construct, they are still quite limited in functionality, and they often contain bugs. This project aims to construct a framework for better refactoring tools. In particular, the work is driven by refactorings for a new set of language features, called `aspect-oriented programming' that have recently been added to Java. Our framework will be based on developments in three separate areas of computer science: * "strategies" to control the process of rewriting program code, from the term rewriting community * "reference attribute grammars" to specify the conditions that guarantee behaviour is preserved, from the compilers community * "incremental evaluation" of declarative rules, from the functional and logic programming community. The quality of our framework will be assessed by coding selected case studies using alternative methods. In particular, we shall implement several refactorings directly in Eclipse, the leading development environment for writing aspect-oriented programs in industry. SELECTION CRITERIA The PhD student will be concerned with the theoretical foundations of the refactoring framework, for instance proofs of correctness for refactorings, and also for the incremental evaluation mechanism. We are thus looking for someone with good mathematical skills, in particular regarding formal properties of type systems and program analyses. Candidates must have an outstanding undergraduate or master's degree in computer science. More generally, candidates must satisfy the usual requirements: http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/prospective/dphil/dphil-criteria.pdf for doing a doctorate at Oxford. HOW TO APPLY The deadline for applications has been extended to July 17, 2007, but earlier applications will be reviewed immediately, so candidates are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. Previous applicants need not re-apply. To apply you need to download the University's application form from: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply/forms You will need to submit references and a transcript with your application. It is also required to submit a research proposal: in this proposal, please elaborate on the reasons why you are interested in this project, and the research questions you find most exciting and important to address within the scope of the project. To make a convincing proposal, you may wish to consult some of the suggested reading below. Please submit your application to: Mrs. Julie Sheppard Secretary for Graduate Studies Oxford University Computing Laboratory Wolfson Building Parks Road Oxford OX1 3QD United Kingdom AND NOT TO THE ADDRESS ON THE APPLICATION FORM FURTHER INFORMATION We are happy to discuss any of the above informally with prospective candidates. Just email one or all of the project leaders: Oege de Moor (oege(a)comlab.ox.ac.uk) Torbjorn Ekman (torbjorn(a)comlab.ox.ac.uk) Mathieu Verbaere (matv(a)comlab.ox.ac.uk) SUGGESTED READING Avgustinov et al, Semantics of Static Pointcuts in AspectJ, POPL 2007 http://progtools.comlab.ox.ac.uk/members/oege/publications/documents/pcsema… Ekman and Hedin. Rewritable Reference Attributed Grammars, ECOOP 2004. http://www.cs.lth.se/gorel/publications/2004-ReRAGs-LNCS.pdf Verbaere, Ettinger and De Moor. JunGL: a Scripting Language forRefactoring, ICSE 2006 http://progtools.comlab.ox.ac.uk/publications/icse06jungl Visser. Program Transformation with Stratego/XT: Rules, Strategies, Tools and Systems in StrategoXT-0.9. Domain-specific program generation. http://www.cs.uu.nl/research/techreps/UU-CS-2004-011.html

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